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Avatar
Overrated but still great
Avatar is smooth-sailing for about an hour and a half and then after that it becomes essentially a Fern Gully sequel, albeit a very good one. James Cameron is undoubtedly one of the finest directors in the world and he does nothing to ruin that reputation with Avatar. Each individual scene is meticulously planned out and delivered upon from a creative standpoint. This is the most impressive movie to date CGI-wise. However, the plotline keeps it from being a masterpiece.
My hat is off to Cameron for his new 3D technology. All of the CGI-rendered environments and facial animations are just breathtaking. I was a little skeptical of the praise going into the actor-to-avatar transition before watching Avatar but all that skepticism melted away as the movie went along. Let me say this now: the Na’vi look and move like real beings. They smile, cry, express anger, etc. just like a human being. That’s probably because they ARE human beings or at least are being portrayed by actual ones. Whatever the actors do on one side the avatars replicate perfectly on the opposite side of the camera. It is pretty amazing to say the least.
But I have a bone to pick with the screenwriter. What was his name? Oh yeah…James Cameron. Well, Mr. Cameron, you may be a visionary, but you are not Shakespeare. Your explanation of the Na’vi’s customs is about as vague as it gets. What? Tree of Life? What the heck is that? It could have been called The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil for all I cared. Never mind…then I would have to try and connect it back to Adam and Eve. Let’s stick with the leaky faucet and not turn it into a waterfall. And for goodness sake, sir, there is no way you can sit there and tell me that you did not copy a good portion of the story from Fern Gully. It is so obvious that it may as well have been tattooed on Sam Worthington’s forehead. The scene in which the giant tanks start cutting down trees in the Na’vi’s forest is the worst scene in the entire film.
The little bit of goodness that this takes away from an otherwise remarkable film is nonetheless noticeable. In a two hour and forty-two minute movie there is a large margin for error and, speaking of margins, I wish Cameron had scribbled “Fix this” in his a little more. I mean, I remember all of his good-to-great movies like Terminator 2: Judgment Day, True Lies, and Titanic. Out of those three, True Lies is my favorite. It was fun and entertaining and so was Avatar but after Cameron spent twelve years on Avatar, it should have been close to the best movie ever, and it wasn’t.
The Hurt Locker won and deserved to win the Academy Award for Best Picture for last year. Avatar walked away with a plethora of other Academy Awards and a Best Picture Golden Globe. It deserved some of the adulation that it got but I will admit that it is very overrated. Some other folks probably don’t think so. And, seeing as how this is the highest-grossing movie in history, James Cameron probably doesn’t care. In fact, he’s already working on the sequel. Let’s hope it’s as good as all of his other movies have been. He didn’t take time off this time. Could that be a mistake?
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1/2
Categories: None
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